


oh but honey

by sapphicish



Series: take something beautiful, then go and smash it [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Season 2, Spoilers, just jessica jones things™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 22:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13961304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: "You know, I heard somewhere that if you listen to a song that's stuck in your head, it gets unstuck.”“And I heard somewhere that you're a bullshitter."





	oh but honey

**Author's Note:**

> this taught me that i'm not very good at writing jessica jones but i tried! i really did Try! idk i just love my ragemonster mom the most out of anyone ever that's all but it's FINE it really is FINE it's not like i'm STILL crying or anything hahahafgflhhkldgkl

“Cheer up, Jessie.”

It comes three hours after she feels like she's finally gotten the blood off of her face, her hair, her hands. Jessica knows after a lifetime of blood that it sticks in more ways than one; you look down at your hands, and they're clean because you scrubbed them raw under hot water and too much soap, but you still see the blood. You look at your face, and it's red because you've given it the same treatment, but the blood is still there.

Jessica's halfway into a bottle of whiskey when it comes, when _she_ comes, and Jessica stares at the amber liquid in the bottle instead of looking up, feeling like all the alcohol has trapped itself in her throat like a rock, burning, burning.

Or maybe that's something else.

“Goddamn it,” she says when the couch sinks down beside her and a hand combs through her hair. “Don't. Don't do that. Stop touching me and just—just _go._ ”

“You're all right,” the voice says, squeezing her shoulder. Jessica closes her eyes. “Shh. It's all right.”

Jessica clenches her hand tight around the neck of the bottle, leans forward to drop her head into her hands but not before taking another drink. “Screw you.”

The voice huffs beside her. “You're not going to start naming those streets, are you?” It's wry, teasing. Playful. Jessica fucking hates it. Her fingers twitch. Tighter. Tighter.

_Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._

Jessica looks up.

There isn't a hole in her mother's head, not now. (But there is. There was.) No blood. No hole. Just good old frizzy-haired monstrosity Alisa Jones, sitting beside her on the couch, staring expectantly at her like she's waiting for Jessica to throw the bottle at her head.

Jessica throws the bottle at her head.

Her mother ducks, and it shatters on the floor beside the couch because of course her mother ducks because of course because her mother isn't actually here this is all some goddamn hallucination –

Jessica breathes in deep and lets it out, hates that it comes out sounding like a harsh sob than what she intended it to be: bitter laughter. “Screw you,” she says again, settles back into the couch and covers her eyes with a hand. “Screw you. Screw you. Screw you.” It doesn't make her feel any better, so she starts shouting it, over and over again so that her voice echoes around the apartment, too angry, too loud, probably going to get some jerkoff from the other end of the hallway to come complaining about her tantrum. When she finally can't speak anymore, she waits a minute; then, feeling like she's balancing on a tightrope and it can go either way, she lets her hand fall away.

Alisa looks at her, gentle and unsmiling. “Feel better?”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Jessica says.

“I guess not,” Alisa drones, and her teeth show in a smile. Jessica wants to – wants to –

She imagines the blood again, imagines the hole, imagines Alisa's blank, peaceful face slumped over on in that seat on top of that fucking goddamn ferris wheel and – and. Jessica slides her hands through her hair, feels her fingers catch on a knot and rips it right through because the pain grounds her just for a second. She digs her nails into her scalp, presses her palms hard to her eyes until stars burst in the darkness behind her eyelids. When the buzzing in her head comes to a standstill, she hears it – humming, the tune familiar and quiet and right next to her ear, Alisa's arms wrapped around her shoulders.

“Every morning, every evening...”

“Shut up,” Jessica says, doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry or to scream, but she doesn't really want to do any of those things so she bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood. The hallucination shuts up, but not as far as the humming goes; it continues, follows the entire song, and Jessica realizes that she doesn't need to hear her sing it. She hears the words in her own head, exact and perfect. She hears herself say, as though from a distance, “If I wake up with this goddamn song stuck in my head, I'm going to kill you.”

She feels her mother smile against her temple, knows what she's going to say before she says it, knows that she made the stupid mistake of saying _that_ and this is all on her, all of it. “A little bit too late for that, Jessie. You know, I heard somewhere that if you listen to a song that's stuck in your head, it gets unstuck.”

Alisa pulls, tugs, and it's with no sort of strength that Jessica can't weasel her way out from underneath, but she finds herself leaning in to accept the sideways hug anyway, squeezing her eyes shut. Better than Kilgrave, at least, better than hearing his voice, better than hearing the words _smile Jessica smile Jessica smile Jessica SMILE JESSICA_ echo in her head endlessly, ricocheting off her skull. “And I heard somewhere that you're a bullshitter,” she rasps.

In retrospect, this song _isn't_ much of a better thing to ricochet off her skull, just makes her throat swell and her tongue feel numb in her mouth and her eyes sting.

“Maybe so. It's not your fault, you know. None of this is.” Oh, great. A _kind_ hallucination. What next? A hallucination that cooks her breakfast in the mornings? “We both know I'm a god-awful cook, but I can do that if you want.”

“Too goddamn bad. I don't want. What I want is for you to _leave._ ”

“All right.” Alisa tugs on a strand of her hair, playfully, like they're a fucking family who does shit like that and not a – not _Jessica_ and some hallucination her whiskey-drowned mind has spawned up from the depths of itself. “You're bleeding, anyway.”

“What?” But she blinks and her mother is gone, and she looks down at her hand and curses too many times to count. There's a glass shard sticking out of the palm of her hand, and blood oozes steadily out from around it, red. Red. Too bright. Jessica closes her eyes hard, breathing in and out to try and conquer the swelling nausea that threatens to take her over.

For once, she's the victor, and she stands and makes her way sluggishly into the bathroom. She yanks out the shard over the sink, runs her hand beneath hot water and watches it run pink and red, flecks of blood spattered across the dirty porcelain. Her hands are trembling when she wraps it in a bandage, and she sits down on the toilet seat when she realizes she's too dizzy to go back to the couch, or to bed, or to a bar, or to the nearest place that sells cheap shitty liquor for her to _not_ waste on a vision of her recently departed monster of a mother.

Jessica gags on the thought; _monster,_ departed, recently. Mother. Mother. _Mom._

 _Come back,_ Jessica almost says, but she clamps her teeth down around the words not spoken just in time.

She leans close over the sink and stares at herself in the mirror. The image of herself reflected back at her is blurry, and it doubles and triples and multiplies and then all collapses back together in just one. Just herself, bleeding and stupid and alone, eyes bloodshot and wet. Shadows lurk under her eyes, and all the sound around her – sirens outside, a dog barking, the water running – filters out to one key symphony. Jessica doesn't know what it is at first, just that it's annoying; it takes another minute or two of gazing into the glass and watching her throat undulate and her lips shift to realize what it is.

Humming.

_The rent's unpaid, dear—_

Behind her, her mother laughs. “All right. Maybe I was wrong about the 'unstuck' thing.”

This time, the nausea wins.


End file.
